Ylläpitäjä
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20 t
Ok, since I'm sick to shit of this question getting asked every third day. This is about two different topics:
- What is the bare minimum training you need to build basic health/fitness (and note that this gets you the gradn majority of benefits you'll get with more providing exponentially less benefit)
- How much training is required to maintain fitness once developed
Now people can just get linked to this every time the same question gets asked since the FB search function is apparently beyond most people.
How Much Training for Basic CV/Strength Fitness?
Short answer: not a hell of a lot
Long answer: You need strength training, some basic cardiovascular training, many guidelines include flexibility (blah, just do full ROM strength training) and while balance gets trotted out for old farts like me, you get much of the same benefit from basic strength training to begin with.
Strength Training:
You need twice/week full body for 1-3 sets for each major muscle group to build basic strength fitness. Usually 8-12 reps is thrown about but a litle heavier (8's) is probably better for bone mineral density. That's it. Seriously. That's it. You can crank out 1 set per exercise for 8-10 muscles groups in 30 minutes or less.
At least in beginners, 1 set will give you like 80% of the benefits of multiple sets. And twice/week gives you 80% of the benefits of three. Given that time is the single most commonly reported roadblock to regular exercise, this matters. Adding a third day to get 20% more gains is a shit ROI. Doubling or tripling training time by doubling or tripling sets for 20% gains is a shit ROI.
Sample training:
1. Compound lower body exercise (leg press, hack squat, pendulum squat). Fuck back squats for genpop it's too technical to teach/learn and most can't safely progress it without a lot of practice. . Ideally this should load the femur and spine for BMD issues. Trains quads, glutes, hams (to some degree). *
2. Leg curl (kind of optional to be honest)
3. A compound chest movement of some sort: chest press, incline chest press. Trains chest/ delts/tris. *
4. A compound back movement: Think machine row of some sort. Depending on how it's done this gets midback, lats and biceps. *
To that you can add one exercise for
5. Delts (lateral raise, upright row)
6. biceps
7. Triceps
8. Core: some type of weighted ab work *
9. Back extension
9 total exercises. Do a hip thrust for booty if you want and that's 10.
* The 4 exercises with an asterisk could, in presmise be all you honestly needed to generally hit the entire body. 10 minutes in and out the door. Not saying you should or shouldn't do this. But it gets the job done in a pinch. So if yo'ure short on time, go in, hit 4 sets and go home. If you have more time, do more work.
Cardiovascular training
Bare minimum to improve actual cardiovascular health paramters is 20-30 minutes 3X/week at an RPE of 3-5 (challenging but not impossible). This might correspond to 120-140 heart rate or so but this varies enormously. IF you can keep a broken conversation, it's the right intensity.
You could do an interval session every so often. Or 2 standard workouts and 1 interval session per week. Boom, sorted.
That's it.
A high step count (the 10,000 k goal) will improve general health. It won't improve cardiovascular health parameters in the same sense as the above (bullshit like VO2 max, reduced resting heart rate, stroke volume, blah, blah).
Stretching: Who cares. It's hippy crap.
Balance work: Whatever. Look it up.
That's it, that's the minimum for health.
Twice/week weight training full body
Three times/week aerobic training (1 interval session optional).
Done. It's 3 hours/week maximum.
Go to the gym for 2Xweight workouts, do aerobic work after. One hour
A third aerobic or interval session on an intervening day.
DONE
You can do more for slightly better gains. But you can't do less.
Maintenance Training
As the fitness industry is finally recognizing, by which I mean, what I've been saying for over 20 years, the amount of training to MAINTAIN basic fitness is pretty minimal.
In general you can reduce training volume (duration or number of sets) and frequency (number of time per week) by up to 2/3rds so long as you maintain intensity (Heart rate, poweroutput, walking/running speed, weight on bar).
What you can NOT do is reduce intensity.
Full volume, reduced frequency reduced intensity, you lose fitness.
Full frequency, reduced volume, reduced intensity you lose fitness.
Full volume, full frequency, reduced intensity, you lose fitness.
You must maintain intensity.
Note: it's a little hard to reduce the minimums from above to maintenance, they are already low. So in the case that you're coming from relatively low volumes, move to the minimum guidelines and you're sorted.
This is more for people doing more training who have life come up or are just sick of pouring 8 hours/week into this moronic hobby for no progress. Or whatever.
Say you're doing 1 hour of aerobic training 6 days/week because you're a running addict. 6 hours/week at 140 heart rate. Whatever speed creates that.
You can reduce that 2-3 times per week (probably three which is kind of minmum for aerobic work) for 2 total hours (6 hours reduced by 2/3rds) per week so long as you maintain running speed. That's it.
So 3X40 minute sessions/week at 140 HR. That's all you need to maintain your aerobic fitness for pretty extended periods. How long? Don't know. But longer than you think.
For weight training it's the same.
Say you're doing 8 sets 2X/week per muscle group. 16 sets total with some amount of weight on the bar on each exercise. Or at 2RIR. Whatever you use to gauge intensity.
You can reduce those 16 sets to about 5-6 per week (2/3rds reduction). Technically you can go from 2 sessions/week to 1 session per week. So you could do 5-6 sets per muscle group 1X/week and maintain for really long periods of time. Yes, this is below the minimum guidelines above but strength training works differently after you're trained. And consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Or 2-3 sets 2X/week if you prefer. But ONLY if you continue to maintain weight on the bar/RIR.
That's it, that's maintenance. In the weight room a fair few people in group jsut do myo-reps/DC for maintenance and have been doing it for years without any fitness loss. It takes microscopic amounts of training SO LONG AS YOU MAINTAIN TRAINING INTENSITY.
The fitness industry was positively shocked to learn this last year. I've been saying this since 2002.
Current training reduced by up to 2/3rds frequency and volume so long as you maintain intensity. Boom, done.
sillä saa intensiteettiä lisää sarjaan, ja sit tarvii tehdä vähemmän = enemmän aikaa palautua ja lisää voimaa.
